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construction adhesive on walls and ceiling

Our 1920 craftsman bungalow has black tar-like construction adhesive on the walls and ceiling in our entry and stairwell. What can we do? We have tried a heat gun creating a sticky mess. We have tried scraping it off, creating a mess of the plaster. We have tried skim coating it with joint compound, leaving hills and valleys.

Last edited by lgregory; 06-21-2008 at 12:48 AM.
Reason: include more information

Re: construction adhesive on walls and ceiling

I do not know about liquid nails - dry wall is heavy, hence the hesitation to try to put it up. We are also looking into other ceiling treatments such as a wallpaper that can be painted to look like a tin ceiling.

Re: construction adhesive on walls and ceiling

I would remove the wall covering to studs and drywall it. The tar adhesive was probably to put up cheap plastic tiles but that's a guess. Once it's there it's always there, there is no cheap and easy way to remove it. But, removing everything to studs and applying drywall always works and is a reliable and reasonably affordable approach.

The best other choice would be to apply drywall over what's there and applying it to lathe/plaster walls isn't much different from a normal application; the walls are just thicker and you need to find out where your studs are. Yet, on the other hand, it applies a layer over a bad job which, I think is always a bad idea.